McConnell leaves Boehner on limb

Speaker John Boehner stood before a band of fellow House Republicans on Tuesday and angrily demanded the Senate return to the Capitol and extend the payroll tax cut for a full year.

Left out of the photo op: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the co-architect of the Senate’s two-month tax cut extension. He reached an agreement that has become a throbbing political headache for Boehner and has remained unusually silent as the partisan rancor and gridlock cause a year-end embarrassment for Congress.

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While the two men have been remarkably united this year, the year-end package has prompted an unusual amount of confusion, disunity, frustration and increased finger-pointing, both publicly and privately, between House Republicans and Senate Republicans over who is at fault in the political fiasco.

It’s the kind of situation McConnell and Boehner have long sought to avoid. And now some GOP insiders fear they’ve ceded the upper hand on taxes and the economy to President Barack Obama in the 2012 election year.

“This is a colossal fumble by the House Republicans,” said a senior Senate GOP aide, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about his own party. “Their inability to recognize a win is costing our party our long-held advantage on the key issue of tax relief. It’s time for Boehner and [House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor to look these rookies in the eye and explain how the game is won or lost.”

The rebellion among House Republicans against the Senate has put McConnell in an awkward position as well. He faces criticism from the GOP rank and file for cutting a deal they don’t like and fierce attacks from Senate Democrats for not voicing support for his own proposal. In the meantime, at least a half-dozen members from McConnell’s own conference are publicly voicing concern over the House GOP’s decision to block the Senate plan.

While McConnell has publicly backed Boehner through a spokesman on Sunday, he hasn’t engaged in the full-throated attacks on Democrats — or calls for the Senate to reconvene — that many in the House have. Instead, he’s quietly huddled back home in Louisville, including spending some time at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville.

Boehner, for his part, will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, when he’s expected to hold a short news conference urging Obama to press Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to reopen talks. The Ohio Republican and other GOP lawmakers may extend this effort for the rest of the week and into the next, congressional aides said.

Some angry House Republicans lay the blame for the payroll tax standoff directly on McConnell, rather than Boehner, Obama or Democratic congressional leaders.

“He kind of hung us out to dry to be honest with you,” Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) said of McConnell.

Republican Rep. Jeff Flake, who’s running for the Senate in Arizona, said he was surprised by McConnell’s deal-cutting with Reid.

“I just thought they have been saying 12 months all along; this just seemed that he would hew a little closer to what the House wanted,” said Flake, an opponent of extending the Social Security payroll tax break.

Senate Democrats, for their part, have demanded that McConnell publicly back the deal he hammered out with Reid during a marathon negotiating session last week.